Industrial Fire Prevention

Workplace Safety | Consider Inherent Safety at Your Plant | Chemical Processing From CheicalProcessing.com, an excellent article on Inherent Safety Design (ISD).  Here are a few important highlights for ISD.  This article has been condensed for space, for the full article, click on the link above. Consider Inherent Safety at Your Plant Many sites can benefit -- but confusion about how to identify options stymies efforts. By Dennis C. Hendershot, process safety consultant. Inherently safer design (ISD) is a philosophy for designing and operating a safe process plant [1,2]. ISD aims to eliminate or significantly reduce hazards, rather than managing them with hardware and procedures. When feasible, ISD provides more robust and reliable risk management and, by eliminating costs associated with safety equipment and procedures, may make processes simpler and more economical. Levels of Inherent Safety Used during detailed equipment configuration and design, it can e...

Failure Modes of Equipment Reliability Processes From ReliablePlant.com a great and timely article outlining various Failure Modes including not understanding the Equipment Reliability Process, and related to combustible dust fires and explosions not understanding Mechanical Ignition sources . For the full article click on the link above. Failure Modes of Equipment Reliability Processes Gary Fore, CMRP Bill Hillman Most equipment failures are a result of failed reliability processes. This article covers many of the reasons why equipment reliability processes fail. The authors have personally observed all of the reasons for reliability process failure discussed in this paper. Failure Mode: Implementation Failure It can be rightfully argued that all equipment reliability process (EqRP) failure modes are somehow tied to poor implementation. Not establishing an initial direction is a critical mistake in the implementation process. Establishing...

On his blog our friend Dr. Saraf asks: Inherent Safety = Lower Risks? He is speaking of chemical processes, but this thinking can be applied to other industries and processes. For example, on a dust collection system, considering where you locate the fan and what type fan used, whether to return the air back to the plant, etc., can lead to an inherently safer design. Recently a customer utilized a spark resistant fan on a wood dust closed loop relay system with light loading, thus reducing the need for additional spark detection and extinguishing systems in this particular design. The NFPA 664 Prescriptive design was to add Spark detection. By building the process safer, he was able to get his design approved by the local AHJ. The rest of Dr. Saraf's blog post: Chemical processes and designs are increasingly being evaluated for inherent safety - i.e. reduce the hazard rather than the risk. The philosophy behind inherent safety is ‘What You Don’t Have, Can’t Leak’ and so...